


The Devil Was an Angel First

by ginwhitlock



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Mentions War, and it is shown in jaspers feelings, and shes not horrible i guess, and slavery as a result, i am not in support of the confederacy, jasper/bella pre relationship, jaspers origin story lmao, maria is in this, mentions blood, mentions killing, minimal swearing, noncanon relationships, oh and religious mention, the confederacy mostly, this mentions the civil war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27359038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginwhitlock/pseuds/ginwhitlock
Summary: Jasper became a monster, but he wasn't always one.
Relationships: Jasper Hale/Bella Swan
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	The Devil Was an Angel First

**Author's Note:**

> drabble. unbeta'd. I just love some jasper/bella and thought of someone and wrote this in like twenty minutes forgive me

Jasper Whitlock walks like an abandoned mountain dog on a mission at the ripe age of seven. It’s an almost hobble, the leather of his boots harsh against his still callusing flesh. His hands know only the soft baby hair of the hogs, the rolling steam off the heifers in the early morn, and the cutting anguish of digging through the rocky soil for scraps the mules missed.

His mother takes him to Chapel on Sundays, dressed in his lightest formal to combat the oppressive heat. The preacher speaks in tongues and the boy can hardly make out the vowels as they roll through the older man’s mouth. His lips try to replicate them anyway. A sharp ‘A’ sits at the start of the sermon, a rogue whisper escaping Jasper’s lungs with each mangled roar.

The stained glass looks like hay dust. The river he was baptized in has gone dry. August has already taken a little girl not any older than he is. His mother holds him tighter as the child’s name is repeated to the congregation.

He thought it was a pretty little hymn. _Isabella_.

He is thirteen when the sounds of fighting take precedence over feeding the cattle. He hasn’t been to the school house in years, his hands forming fists better than he ever held a lead instrument.

The bruises overcome his broken nose before he can make it home to his sisters. Adelaide, only six at the time, pinches the blackening skin before he can rush past her. He holds his breath as a whine tries to escape, his father staring down his reverent son as if to critique his injuries. His eyes are mossy like Mr. Stewart’s lake and Jasper refuses to meet them. Knowledge brews strong in his chest, just under another scar, as the girls fret over him trying to calm the swelling.

Jasper can make out the words before they leave his father's thin grimace.

“You should learn to duck.”

The day he turns seventeen the hot heat of hell rolls through their dirty plot of land. He swears the ruffage growing in his mother’s garden is sweating in its presence.

The sign ups are posted.

He thought— in vain— he could escape the damn thing. But he saw the slave revolts. The anger that placated them. He witnessed the hate in his father's eyes every time they plowed the field next to Thomas Gentry’s.

He didn’t want to kill anyone. He hardly believed in his father’s preachings about succession. The war loomed under the skin of his neck, and he knew it was either to move up north like his youngest sister—or die by his old man’s hands.

Jasper Whitlock is nineteen when he learns that death is not a choice.

His chin drips scarlet at the expense of another traveling soldier. Their grey uniforms stink of sweat and piss and misplaced pride. Their guns are bent and useless, their traitor flags torn in the chase.

For that is what he was built for— the chase.

Maria has him on roundup duty. Farm towns, camps... churches.

Each time his stolen boots hit the hardwood he waits for God to finally strike him down. There is holy water in a crystal basin by the front doors and he wants to guzzle it: to feel the sting he believes will be there.

The blood from the repentant crowd in the back row covers his hands in faux sacrifice. He’s starting to think he’s the only godly thing in the world. His fangs sharp as needle point, his feet like a horse with their ability to cave in a wayward skull. The sunlight does nothing but send his presence over the other awaiting faces, their eyes bulging out of their pale skulls.

He tells Maria he kills the children before he leaves.

_She never brings up how she knows he’s lying._

It’s ten thirty on a Tuesday morning, the clock an endless tic in Jasper’s one hundred and sixty-two year old ears. His hands are steady around a water bottle he has never drank out of, his hair a wheat colored halo above his shoulders. His “adopted” siblings are silent on either side of him as the doors to the cafeteria push open with a grudge.

Bella Swan is seventeen, gait like a sheep dog when she locks onto honey golden eyes for the first time and the air drops out of her lungs.


End file.
